The bright red 220-seat pop-up space outside the dull grey Southbank Centre was planned as a one-year project, but it’s been so popular that they’re keeping it until 2017. But the National only licensed the name “The Shed” (which belongs to a small venue in Yorkshire) through last month. What’ll they call it now?

“When we talk about the novelist as critic, or the critic as novelist, the as matters. It creates a hierarchy by tucking one identity inside the other, like a pair of Russian nesting dolls. Which body is the central one, the beating heart?”

Jarl Mohn “is the founder of the E! Entertainment Television cable channel and has a long list of media investments and corporate board appointments on his résumé. Among other positions, he was general manager of MTV and VH1 cable networks between 1986 and 1990.”

“PhD and MFA programs are costly; job prospects are dim; graduate student labor is not recognized as work; there is a huge opportunity cost to spending seven years toiling away on book you worry will never see the light of day. These are urgent problems.”

“Yes, it’s taken for granted that creating is hard, but also that it’s somehow fundamentally unserious. Schoolchildren may be encouraged (at least rhetorically) to pursue their passions and cultivate their talents, but as they grow up, they are warned away from artistic careers.”

“There are so many possibilities. So many mistakes that artists make – like not taking the business side of art seriously or only taking it seriously in the middle of a crisis when, as I mentioned in my last post, it is too late. Or romanticizing the ‘starving artist’ notion. Or allowing themselves to become resentful of other artists’ success. I could go on.”

“Noël Coward still remains the West End’s most represented playwright, with Blithe Spirit and the mind-bogglingly creaky Relative Values both currently playing. The latter would suggest that there is really not all that much difference between the theatre of the early 1950s and that of the 21st century.”

“It may sound simplistic, but what sets these six apart in a corps of 61 — besides their promise and rigor — is the sheer breadth of their dancing. They think about transition steps. They don’t pause before a turn. They move without waiting for applause. Here’s to the new blood.”

“You need to be confident, very decisive and opinionated, I’m afraid. Authors expect you to have the expertise, experience and instinct to tell them what to do and then they can decide whether they agree with you or not.”

Stephanie Ziesel “oversaw the troupe through a turbulent stretch during which it dismissed its founding artistic director, Dennis Nahat, and reshuffled its board of directors. Ballet officials sang her praises but would not comment on the specifics behind this parting of the ways.”

“Among Amazon’s tactics against Hachette, some of which it has been employing for months, are charging more for its books and suggesting that readers might enjoy instead a book from another author. If customers for some reason persist and buy a Hachette book anyway, Amazon is saying it will take weeks to deliver it.”

So much for instant drone delivery: “The affected books are a mixture of new and old. A just-published memoir, ‘Everybody’s Got Something,’ by the ‘Good Morning America’ anchor Robin Roberts, is taking as long as three weeks to ship, customers were told. So is Stephen Colbert’s ‘America Again: Re-becoming the Greatness We Never Weren’t.'”